29 November 2010 1:55 PM

... as I have rather too many obligations today to do the sort of posting I'd like to, a few comments on various arguments going on on several threads.

Some dogged oppositionists here seem to disagree with me whatever I say. I suspect that one of these is Harold Stone, who jeers at me for allegedly having 'been on holiday in Scotland' as a child. Actually, I lived in Scotland as a child, to be precise in Somerville Road, Rosyth, then (and possibly still now) Royal Navy married quarters. As I have often said, many of my earliest memories are of Scottish landscape and of Scottish voices, I still remember how sad I was to leave, and I have never been able to share or particularly understand the silly hostility that some English people have for Scotland and the Scots.

Likewise, every time I have visited either part of Ireland I have felt myself among friends and among a people who have done much to make our culture and civilisation as great as they are. Our language would, especially, be much poorer without the Irish (and Welsh) contributions to literature. Our Christianity would not be anything like so deep-rooted without the Irish contribution to it. Of course we are all different. But a great deal unites us, and I am tired of all those petty nationalisms which would Balkanise us ready for dissolution into the EU soup. I've seen shamefully little of Wales, but think that's a failing in someone who is generally well-travelled both in this country and elsewhere. I intend to put it right when I've time.

Various people, prominent among them the person who pretentiously posts under a long Greek name, wilfully misunderstand my dispute with Matthew Parris, imagining that I am distressed because Mr Parris has said something rude about me. They say I have a 'thin skin', as if this were personal and to do with abuse or name-calling. Mr Parris did in fact make a cheap jibe against me, as I recorded, but I haven't asked him to retract that or apologise for it. It is of no importance, though I suspect Mr Parris is faintly ashamed of it anyway.

I believe that he has, on the other hand, offended against the truth by giving a deeply misleading account of what I said to him, to a large audience - and failing to make any gesture of retraction or repentance despite many chances to do so and an open invitation to come here and explain himself.

Before the mists of time close over this episode, let me set out…

What I said...

Mr Parris launches into his equation of racial bigotry with Christian sexual morality.

I respond. ‘It's a false comparison.

‘Racial bigotry is irrational, stupid and indefensible. It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. There is no difference between people of different skin colours apart from their colour.’

‘I am completely opposed to racial bigotry precisely because it is irrational and stupid. The argument about homosexuality is a tiny side-issue of the major point - which is, “is lifelong heterosexual marriage the only sexual relationship which society is prepared to endorse, or not? Which used to be the case, and is now not the case.”

‘That is a different argument and involves the application of reason and a number of other things. It is not to be compared to racial bigotry by any serious and thoughtful person - and to do so is simply a smear.’

At this point the discussion is brought to a brisk end by Mr Stourton, against my pleas for more time.

What Mr Parris said I said

‘Among his [Peter Hitchens's] arguments, I recall, was the assertion that discriminating against gays is OK because it is an objective fact that gay relationships are inferior, whereas discrimination against Blacks or Jews is not OK because it is an objective fact that this is sheer prejudice.’

The full details of this are still available in a posting placed on this site on 4th November.

But when I posted those, I left it to readers to conclude that the difference between the two versions was serious and disturbing.

I now feel compelled to explain why, since it has obviously gone past at least some of them, and maybe Mr Parris himself.

First of all, I was arguing about marriage versus non-marriage, not about homosexuality. Mr Parris wished to argue about homosexuality and so, as far as I could see, did the BBC presenter involved. As to why this might have been, readers are welcome to speculate. I regard this as a side issue and a dead end in this discussion, and resolved some time ago not to be lured into it any further, unless it was absolutely necessary.

Note that I do not refer directly to homosexuals in the discussion at all. I refer to the status of lifelong heterosexual marriage. Nor do I say anything about 'inferiority'. I speak of society's endorsement. And I say that a rational argument can be had about whether society should give this endorsement only to lifelong heterosexual marriage.

If there are implications of 'inferiority', then they are primarily directed at heterosexuals who either don't get married or choose to dissolve their marriages in divorce or by desertion. These are immensely more numerous, and important in their effect, than homosexuals.

Now, to 'discriminate' against people on the grounds that they did not engage in lifelong marriage is actually *not* to discriminate between them and homosexual couples. It is to place all non-lifelong, non-monogamous arrangements in the same bracket, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

It is also to 'discriminate' on the grounds of behaviour and action in public, not on grounds of inner nature, fixed or otherwise (though Mr Parris has written interestingly about this tricky subject, as is mentioned in my book 'The Cameron Delusion'). In fact it is to offer privileges to one group, and not to the others, whether homosexual, celibate or heterosexually inconstant.

Thus, to portray this careful (if perforce unfinished) statement as my saying ‘discriminating against “gays” is OK’ because ‘it is an objective fact that “gay” relationships are inferior’ is not merely a crude caricature of my argument. It is actually so misleading as to be false. No such words passed my lips. No such thought crossed my mind. I am utterly opposed to the persecution of individual homosexuals, either in law or in our culture, as I have many times said. To be opposed to homosexual equality is not to be in favour of such things, and it is time this was clearly understood.

I do not in fact use the phrase 'objective fact'. However, I would have argued, had I been given time, that the objective facts do show that the outcomes for children are far better in a society where lifelong heterosexual marriage is the accepted norm than in one where it is not. That is why I think reason and facts have a part in this discussion. As is so often the case, Christianity is the force which argues most strongly for the position which also turns out - in the long term - to be reasonable and fact-based, but I will leave others to wonder why that might be. But a wholly secular reasoned case can be made in favour of lifelong marriage.

The sexual liberation movement is in fact overwhelmingly heterosexual, but has learned to use people such as Mr Parris so as to portray its opponents as bigots rather than moralists, precisely through this sort of distortion. If it can persuade a fickle mob to think that Christian moralists are anxious to persecute homosexual individuals, and comparable in nature to the South African apartheid state (which incidentally found many of its toughest and most uncompromising opponents in the Anglican Church) then that mob will not listen to anything else that is said. QED.

The matter is explored at greater length in my book 'The Cameron Delusion', if anyone is interested in debate rather than in name-calling.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.

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27 November 2010 8:50 PM

Prince Charles must succeed his mother when that sad moment comes. Opinion polls suggesting that we pass the throne to Prince William over his father’s head are both ­constitutionally stupid and slightly sinister.

Most opinion polls need to be viewed with a lot of suspicion, and read very carefully. It was because I took this view that I was the only commentator in the country who correctly predicted that David Cameron’s Liberal Tories would not win May’s General Election.

So please believe me when I point out that such polls do not just ­happen. Someone decides to commission them, for a reason. This costs a lot of money. And the questions that are asked can themselves be used to create opinions where none existed. They are a device to manipulate public opinion, not a device for measuring it.

Just asking people this question is a form of propaganda. The whole point of the monarchy is that it is not a popularity contest. That is how it stays above politics, which increasingly resembles Strictly Come Dancing, since all the parties agree and we can only judge them on their leaders’ staring eyes, bald patches, fluent German, nice clothes, children, wives, unwives etc.

We all know that today’s public darling is tomorrow’s burned-out case. The fact that a fickle public, asked a question in an internet survey, prefers the youth of William to the quizzical permanent middle age of Charles tells us nothing of value. William will age as well. If he became King because he was young and good-looking, he could pres­umably be removed the moment he began to get lined and bald.

How silly. In an era when our politics is full of callow young men with no real experience of life or the world, Prince Charles is a reassuringly wise figure, whose thoughts on many things are a good deal less weird than the Prime Minister’s hurriedly invented bilge about Big Societies and Gross National Hap­piness. Someone has obviously told Mr Cameron that he needs a philos­ophy to be respectable. So he has got Mr Steve Hilton to levitate for a bit and come up with one.

No wonder Charles talks to members of the vegetable kingdom. It must be far more rewarding to chat to the average parsnip than to listen to the careerist PR men, California gurus, retread Marxists, Europhiles and backstairs-crawlers who now infest the upper reaches of the ­British political class.

Last chance to halt Berlin Bulldozer

Please use the next few days to contact your MP and let him or her know that you do not wish to be subjected to Berlin Time. The key vote is this Friday, a day when many MPs don’t bother to turn up in the Commons unless they know you care.

What strikes me about the breezy ‘Darker Later’ campaign – whose supporters probably never see the sunrise except on the way home from all-night parties – is its arrogance inthe face of objections from minorities.

Scots who must be plunged into winter blackness, Orthodox Jews whose prayers must be disrupted, people who get up early every day and don’t want to do it in the dark for long extra months, people who don’t want to be kept awake till nearly midnight on summer evenings, all must bow before this campaign’s questionable claims of benefits, based on guesswork, dubious statistics and little else.

Our current arrangements are a compromise, which may not suit everyone, but at least takes into account the needs and fears of people without a big lobby to back them. The Berlin Bulldozer doesn’t care.

For a real illustration of its arrogant, London-based attitude here’s the alleged comedian David Mitchell, writing in support of ‘Darker Later’ in the Left-wing ‘Observer’ last April: ‘As an added bonus, it’s likely to upset Scottish people and farmers.’ Ho ho.

Poor Gove, reduced to gimmicks already

How sad, but how inevitable, to see my old friend Michael Gove reduced to the usual airy, grandiose boasts of Education Secretaries of both parties for the past 40-odd years – that bad teachers are to be sacked, spelling is to be taught, discipline restored, etc. None of this will happen.

It can’t be done without the return of grammar schools, the reintroduction of corporal punishment, the lowering of the school-leaving age and a mass cull of the education establishment, dedicated as they are to spreading ignorance in the pursuit of equality.

Watching Mr Gove promising to fix the schools without these things is like watching a carpenter trying to make a decent table without a saw, a chisel or a plane. In the end, he’ll be reduced to shouting, plus stunts and gimmicks like, er, getting soldiers to do the teaching.

A nation’s pride sent for scrap

Knowing that we were going to scrap our last serious chunk of sea power was one thing.

Seeing it done was another. The absence of a proper patriotic opposition has never been more painfully obvious, as the Ark Royal is condemned to the breakers, and the Harriers that flew from her are prepared for sale abroad.

On Wednesday we saw decades of experience, skill, courage and tradition dissolved in a few tear-stained minutes on the decree of politicians who clearly have not the slightest feeling for the history of their own country, and who are using the debt crisis as the universal pretext to make cuts that would normally be politically impossible. In thiscase, the cut ought to have been impossible.

The scrapping of Ark Royal is plain stupid.

*******************************The Left-wing former Tory MP, now journalist and BBC favourite, Matthew Parris is mainly famous for his shampoo-free locks. Perhaps he has failed to apologise for misrepresenting me, despite being so often asked to do so, because he is too busy not washing his hair.

*******************************Well, so much for the Government’s promise to put a serious limit on immigration. Not only are they quite unable to control arrivals from the EU. They have left so many loopholes in the rules for non-EU migrants that our wholly unacceptable levels of immigration willcontinue as before. Why, when we have so many graduates and so many jobless people, do we need to import any workers at all?

*******************************Of course we should help Ireland in its time of need. I care little for the Irish government, which has all the charisma of an ashtray and has for years been in the pocket of the EU.

But we owe a debt to the Irish people who, despite the dogmas of their leaders, have so often come to our aid in their thousands in time of war, despite many reasons why they might feel bitter towards us. I hope one day all the peoples of these islands can again live together in a properly united Kingdom. For all our quarrels, we have more in common with each other than with anyone on the Continent.

Far from gloating over Dublin’s long-delayed recognition that EU membership means being a vassal of Germany, we should realise that we are in a similar fix, and it has done neither of us any good.

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24 November 2010 4:26 PM

During the frenzy of unreason which followed the July 7th bombing in London and the various thwarted and theoretical bombs involving liquids, underpants and shoes (none of which has ever actually gone off in non-laboratory conditions), the government decided it needed the power to lock terrorist suspects up for 42, and then for 90 days without charge or trial.

Many of us objected to this on the grounds that it breached a principle of the law, which forbids imprisonment without trial. And, that principle once having been breached, who knows where it might end?

Now Edward Balls, once a prominent member of that government, accepts that this was unnecessary. He thinks we could settle on 14 or 28 days of arbitrary imprisonment.

Well, it's an improvement, and a welcome admission of a mistake, for which Mr Balls should get some credit. I doubt, though, if anyone would be admitting it was a mistake if wiser people had not campaigned so fiercely against these deeply unpleasant and unjustified measures.

I'd just about be ready to allow 48 hours at an outside stretch, though I think it far wiser to stick to 24. If the police really can't think of a holding charge by then, or come up with a good reason to deny bail, then the magistrates should automatically order the release of the arrested person.

As for the supposed 'terror' danger, isn't it axiomatic that a person known to the authorities is more or less useless to any serious terrorist plot, which relies totally on surprise to achieve its aims? Once a person has been so much as interrogated, his name will always attract attention on any passenger manifest, his movements will always be subject to a certain amount of surveillance, and only a complete incompetent would use such a person in any terror enterprise.

The reasons advanced for the reintroduction of arbitrary detention for the first time in 300 years (outside wartime) were not only feeble. They were deadly dangerous to the real liberties we enjoy (instead of the fanciful ones, like the alleged ability to choose our rulers, actually non-existent).

Why? Because arbitrary detention, as the wise authors of England's (and the USA's) Constitutions knew, means that the state has arbitrary power to ruin the individual's life. Such power will always tend to grow up anyway, and only constant vigilance will keep it at a manageable level. An increasing amount of British law effectively abolishes the presumption of innocence (particularly in some cases involving children), and badly needs to be reformed.

Anyone who has committed a real objective crime, for which evidence can be produced, will not in any important way be protected by these ancient safeguards. If there is convincing evidence against him, he can be found guilty and punished all the more severely because of the strong likelihood that he is actually guilty. What makes these safeguards so worthwhile at any cost (and I note some judge complaining about the cost of Jury trial as if a price could be set on liberty) is that they make it very difficult for those in power to use the courts to persecute their critics and opponents.

This is the reason for the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, for the existence of Jury Trial, and the presumption of innocence which is meaningless without it, the Petition of Right in 1628, the Bill of Rights of 1689 which reasserted its principles. And that in turn gave rise to the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, whose authors consciously traced their roots to England's Great Charter and the long battle between Parliament and the House of Stuart. I have mentioned here before that, during the making of a programme on the growing threat to liberty, I was allowed to hold in my hands the actual vellum original of the Bill of Rights, and found myself trembling as I did so.

Yet these tremendous documents are now largely forgotten or unknown by supposedly educated people, and their hard, old lessons ignored in the modern passion for 'Human Rights', which sounds as if it is the same but is in fact a wholly different thing.

Wise and learned men, whom we look down on as ignorant country squires but whose minds were in many ways richer and more informed than ours will ever be, knew one big thing - that power would be abused if it were not restrained. They knew it because they had seen it at first hand. They protected us against the thing they feared by hard, unrelenting laws which said that the state could not do certain things.

The language of their documents is not usually flowery and rhetorical, like the various Declarations of Rights of Man which have so often been a prelude to dreadful assaults on men. The one exception to this is the American Declaration of Independence, which is rather lovely, but which had to be ballasted and contained soon afterwards with the workmanlike carpentry of the Constitution and the emergency repairs to that Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.

In the grumpy tradition of Coke, Selden and the other authors of the Petition of Right, the British and American Bills of Rights are bald, cold, hard limits on power.

'Congress Shall make no law …’ they say.

As in: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’

Or, in the English original of a century before: ‘That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;

‘That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal;

‘That the commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious;

‘That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;‘That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;

‘That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;

‘That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

‘That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;

‘That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;

‘That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders;

‘That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;

‘And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.’

Or, from the Petition of Right: ‘No freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseized of his freehold or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.’

And: ‘no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament; and that none be called to make answer, or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise molested or disquieted concerning the same or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is before mentioned, be imprisoned or detained; and that Your Majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners, and that your people may not be so burdened in time to come; and that the aforesaid commissions, for proceeding by martial law, may be revoked and annulled; and that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatsoever to be executed as aforesaid, lest by colour of them any of your Majesty's subjects be destroyed or put to death contrary to the laws and franchise of the land.’

All of this led to the USA's even harder, clearer and more codifed defences of free debate, protection against arbitrary arrest and the punitive billeting of troops, not to mention the right to bear arms which, technically, all British subjects still possess (though see my 'Brief History of Crime' for a discussion of how this important liberty has been bureaucratically revoked by stealth). And that is why, despite a startling Germanic culture of bureaucracy and over-willing acceptance of authority, English liberty has survived as well as it has (though now much under threat) in the USA. It has also survived (in different conditions and with different) in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The simple point is that humans can only be free where the state is restrained. 'Human Rights' being an attempt to codify a secular morality on the basis of competing group rights, actually strengthens the state by making the courts the umpires in this competition. It also gives the courts the power to legislate, because its showy vagueness allows them to 'interpret' various phrases to their own satisfaction.

Now, it is true that the US Supreme Court has managed to do this with bits of the Bill of Rights, notably the phrase 'cruel and unusual' (itself taken from the 1689 English Bill). But this is obviously intellectually shabby, as no serious person could imagine that the men who drafted this thought that the death penalty was cruel or unusual, or intended that meaning to be conveyed. But it is so much easier to do with the various universal declarations, European Conventions, Canadian Charters and now the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

This last is full of horrible weasel phrases whose effect is often quite different in practice from its apparent meaning. Nobody may be deprived of his possessions ‘except in the public interest’ (Article 17) which is as tough as wet tissue-paper. The rights of freedom of expression and to privacy ('private life') inevitably conflict. The right to marry and found a family conflict with non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, which alter the meaning and status of the word 'marry'. The promises of religious 'diversity' make all faiths equal, thus diminishing the role of the one faith which has actually defined Europe and shaped its distinctive civilisation- Christianity.

The rights of children are in effect the rights of states and their agencies to intervene in supposedly free families.

Articles 47 and 48 on 'Justice' are airy, open to subjective interpretation (and without any means of enforcement). What is a 'reasonable' time? Who judges the impartiality of a tribunal?

We should be prouder of, and better-informed about, the keystones of the astonishing and unusual liberty which we enjoy in these islands and which also exists in the rest of the Anglosphere (though nowhere else). Many other countries may appear on the surface to be as free and open as we are. Switzerland alone has a comparably powerful (yet utterly different) set of mechanisms for keeping the state at bay.

Examined closely, most of the world's post-1945 democracies aren't that free. And we are becoming more like them. If Mr Balls, and others, are prepared to reconsider their rather ruthless view of these matters (and of such monstrosities as identity cards) then it is a good thing for all of us. It is beginning to dawn on lots of people that the terror bogey is an excuse for governments to take powers, rather than a real issue seriously addressed by relevant measures.

But if we are to continue to educate Mr Balls and his colleagues on such basic matters, we must know our own history better. It would help if Oxford graduates had heard of the Bill of Rights.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.

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22 November 2010 3:55 PM

I had planned to spend much of today at an interesting London debate, but - having read the responses to my weekend posting (which is also my MoS column) - I really couldn't resist the chance to deal with a number of remarkably silly and obtuse contributions, of the kind I wish to discourage.

Here goes. Someone calling himself 'Dennis' informs me: ‘Most people have realised that it is the drug dealers themselves who lobby the government to keep cannabis illegal because it keeps their prices high. Nice of you to act as their spokesman.’

Now, were I to use a formula as sloppy as this 'most people have realised' that (say) cannabis is linked with mental health problems, I would be besieged by pro-druggies attacking me for generalising without evidence - even though the work of Robin Murray, often cited here, demonstrates that there appears to be a link. None of the pro-druggie enthusiasts for 'science' or evidence' ever seems capable of dealing with the Murray work, understandably preferring to ignore it.

But I'll be amazed if any of these 'science' and 'evidence' enthusiasts appear here to criticise the bravely anonymous 'Dennis' for his evidence-free claim, combined with smear.

This is not argument. It is heckling.

Next we have 'Tony', again so bold that he dare not let us know his surname. He opines: ‘Twice now the whole idea of linking “Berlin Time” to a nasty Euro conspiracy has been roundly kicked on the Mail website as little other than a fantasy that cynically attempts to exploit any lingering WWII sentiment, or even resentment toward a long dead and irrelevant Kaiser. When that failed, he calls “foul,” arguing that the voice of the people has been strangled by an obscure single interest group. More likely, Mail readers simply agree with the idea of more daylight toward the end of the working day. After all, at this time of year we're all going to work in the dark or near dark. Setting the clocks forward another hour makes no difference to that, does it? I couldn't care less if the sun was due south at 12 noon or 1pm, quite frankly. No one is going to be able to tell the difference. Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to engage the debate on more adult terms instead.’

Well, on the contrary, my original article traced the invention of Central European Time to its historical source, namely Wilhelmine Germany. It pointed out that the same empire had imposed CET on conquered territories in the 1914 war. And that its direct descendant, the Third Reich, had done the same in the 1945 war. And that when those countries were briefly released from German pressure, they reverted to a time-zone closer to their own meridian.

'Tony' presumably knows little of the process by which the European Union has sought to integrate the economies and transport systems of its members, nor has he noticed that this integration has all been one way - that is to suit the interests of Germany, the country whose enormous power the EU was designed to contain and channel into peaceful rather than warlike forms of dominance.

Nor did I call 'foul'. I truthfully pointed out (reproducing on this site the actual posting) that 'Lighter Later' has urged its supporters to post on the site. I discovered this by a simple process of deduction. Large numbers of postings had appeared (much greater than the normal level of comments on such articles) using such politically correct terms as 'xenophobic', not much favoured by readers of these newspapers. They also seemed to have been written by people who had not read the article. So I looked at the 'Lighter Later' website to see if such a call had been made there. And it had. The following day a similar message was posted about a poll on the website. Some people may think this is legitimate. I just believe that, when it happens, it ought to be recorded that it has happened.

If anyone still resents the Kaiser, I don't know who he is. Even my grandfather, who lost most of his friends in the 1914 war, and only survived himself because he had the luck to be posted to India, had softened on the subject by the time he died many years ago. But a lot of people, in my view rightly, see that (as Otto von Bismarck once said) many of Germany's interests are advanced 'in Europe's name'. If different countries co-ordinate their time, there is a simple 'who whom?' question. Who is conceding to whom? Since time is not abstract, but based upon the rotation of the earth, the country which gives up its own meridian, and switches to that of another, is objectively and demonstrably the 'whom' - the weaker, servile part of the relationship.

As I pointed out yesterday, no free and independent country in the world, outside the influence of German economic and diplomatic pressure, has adopted a time zone 15 degrees of longitude away from its own meridian. No more have they abolished their own borders (another amazing achievement of German diplomacy, absurdly unsung). And attempts to shift time so far from nature in this way in Britain, the USA and Portugal, have been rejected in the past precisely because they were so unpopular with normal human beings.

I have also referred to known evidence of covert propaganda by the EU and its supporters in this country, particularly the Connaught Breakfasts, details of which were revealed in the BBC programme 'A letter to The Times', broadcast on Radio 4 on the 3rd February 2000 and jaw-droppingly revelatory. There is no doubt at all that this has taken place in the past. Why should it not still be going on?

If, as 'Tony' claims, this matter is so unimportant, and makes so little difference, why have so many attempts (seven since 1994) been made in the British parliament to switch us to CET?

This is an entirely adult discussion, and I suspect 'Tony' is sulky because it is not going his way.

Here he goes: ‘How on earth is anyone meant to enter into a rational argument about Samantha Cameron's hat?’

Quite easily, actually. See below. But the point I made was that, had Cherie Blair worn such a hat on such an occasion, she would have been criticised for it. Whereas Mrs Cameron wasn't. The hat was a Fedora, and it was jaunty, as male apparel sported by attractive women so often is. Most of us know the basics of the language of clothes, that one does not turn up to a black tie dinner in jeans and t-shirt, or to Glastonbury in a suit. There are some subtleties in between and most of us have made mistakes (there's an amusing and illuminating angle on this in Sebastian Faulks's novel' Engleby', in which the central character's complete inability to wear the right clothes for the right occasion alerts the reader to a far, far deeper problem).

The Labour leader Michael Foot was torn to pieces (metaphorically) some years ago for turning up at the Cenotaph in a coat (now on display in a museum in Manchester) which Fleet Street described as a Donkey Jacket. It wasn't a Donkey Jacket, but Michael Foot was at that stage officially bad, so that it was what it was called. The rest of the language of clothes, though arguable, remains pretty easy to read. I asked a number of people with varying opinions what they thought of the hat. Most felt it was wrong for the occasion, and I tend to agree with them. Mrs Cameron, as it happens, got away with it entirely.

Still Missing the Point about the Professor

Mr Wright continues: ‘Professor Nutt seems to have produced an interesting paper on the effects of drugs - both legal and illegal - within our society. I feel that his conclusions are valid and should be more widely debated.’

Well, if Mr Wright paid any attention here, he would have seen them debated at length on previous postings here, and they had a substantial and sympathetic airing throughout the liberal media on 1st November.

But as it happened, this odd and dubious report was not under discussion on this occasion. It wasn't even mentioned. What was plainly under discussion was whether Professor Nutt's professorial title qualified him to pronounce with authority on matters not connected to his discipline. Two such pronouncements were quotes, both linked by a theme, the first that 160,000 people had suffered 'criminal sanctions' for possessing cannabis, and the second that 'criminalising' such people was more dangerous to them than cannabis itself.

Not merely was the Professor far from his zone of expertise here. His statements seem to me to be thoroughly misleading, and propagandistic. Not only does he seem unwilling to acknowledge Robin Murray's work (and Professor Murray has drawn it to his attention). He suggests that the criminal law is far more punitive towards cannabis than in fact it is. And he suggests that a person who deliberately breaches the criminal law is in some way a victim of a process called 'criminalisation'. Which is logically absurd.

That is what I believe 'stinks' - as any competent reader of English can clearly see, if his mind isn't clouded by prejudice. Now, if anyone wishes to set up as a propagandist for drug law reform, that's fine by me. But he should be introduced as such when he's doing this, not by an academic title which has no bearing on the issue (and whose implied rigorous standards he is not applying in his research into the facts). The public and the media shouldn't imagine that his scientific qualifications, unless directly involved in what he says, automatically entitle his statements to respect. Mr 'Wright' misses this whole point because it does not suit him to engage with it. Were he to do so, he would have to concede that my use of the scientific method - careful research, demonstrable facts etc - was in this case superior to the Professor's.

Plus the Simply Untrue

And now we have Mr Jim Whitehead, who contributes: ‘Peter Hitchens: your blog posts are becoming increasingly ill-argued. You have admitted elsewhere that you do not understand the peer-review process, the foundation of modern scientific research.’

No, Mr Whitehead, I have never 'admitted ' (or indeed said) anything of the kind. I asked, on the 'Today' programme, rhetorically ‘What does Peer Review mean?’ I didn't ask this because I do not know what it technically is, but because I doubt very much that it provides the seal of scientific approval which it is often claimed for it.

Mr Whitehead continues: ‘Here you deign to suggest that Professor Nutt - by providing figures you reluctantly admit to be correct - is somehow abusing his position as a professor. He is not. His assertions, wherever I have seen them, have been supported by factual references to reputable studies.’

I do not think Mr Whitehead knows what 'deign' means, though it is always a pleasure to use it. I do not 'reluctantly admit' (that little word again) or even say that Professor Nutt's figures were correct. Nor was there any reluctance involved in making this the lead item of my column.

The number of impositions of criminal sanctions is a clean different thing from the number of recorded offences for which such sanctions might be applied in law. In fact it is in the gap between the two that the entire argument lies. And if Mr Whitehead, who has the brass neck to attack me for my allegedly 'ill-argued' posts had read the item with any care, he would see that it is an exploration of the chasm between the number of recorded offences and the number of sanctions imposed. It is also an exploration of those 'sanctions', which in many cases are not 'sanctions' at all in any serious meaning of the word.

I might add that more than 22,000 recorded cannabis offences do not seem to have attracted any penalty of any kind at all. If they did, they are not recorded. Thus on basic arithmetic, even if one accepted that a 'Cannabis Warning' or a Caution or a PND was a 'criminal sanction', Professor Nutt is out by 22,000. He has made a basic category error, confusing the recording of an offence with its outcome in the criminal justice system.

I do not think this distinction involves any great precision of language. But even if it did, a Professor of anything should surely be expected to be fastidious about precision.

My figures and my descriptions of 'Cannabis Warnings', 'PND's and 'cautions', come from the relevant government departments (Justice and Home) and from the Association of Chief Police Officers. I am sure anyone else could replicate them if they chose to do so.

Whose posts are 'ill-argued' now, Mr Whitehead?

A Funny Sort of Skewer

And now back to Mr 'Wright' again. He says: ‘I also note that you are particularly prolific in dishing out insults to anyone from Stephen Fry to Tony Blair via mostly everyone to the left of you (which, apart from the resident droolers on this blog, is, well, everyone).’

Well, I'm happy to own to having referred to Mr Blair as 'Princess Tony', a just punishment for his use of the phrase crafted for him 'The People's Princess', and his general takeover of the Diana mourning moment. But I felt, and feel, that he was big enough to look after himself. And the name seemed frivolous after he became instead a bloodstained warlord and a national disgrace.

I'm also proud to have spread to a wider audience the wonderful description of Mr Fry in the 'Dictionary of National Celebrity as 'A stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person is like'. And to point out how immensely puffed up he is. But again, Mr Fry is quite capable of fighting his own corner, as he showed in a recent debate on the Roman Catholic Church where, as I understand it, he took no prisoners.

Mr Wright continues: ‘You are rather over-sensitive though when it comes to criticism of your good self, a major character flaw.’

Well, I have several times explained that my complaint is not over being called names, an experience I have been undergoing since I entered my first school playground more years ago than I can remember and which, though I don't enjoy, I reckon as being a reasonable occupational hazard.

It is over the obdurate unresponsiveness, and unwillingness to argue properly, which is typified in these posts.

What do I mean by unresponsiveness? Well, the opposite of what I have demonstrated above. In this posting, I have taken the meat of the charges against me, and rebutted it in detail. I haven't ignored what's said or pretended it hasn't been. Nor have I misrepresented my opponent's case. Indeed, any visitor here knows that a lot of time and trouble is devoted to providing accurate quotation on which to base arguments.

Mr Andrew Bishop asks: ‘Do I get the impression that you want comments, only if they express views similar to yourself?’ To which I can only reply that if he has that impression, he hasn't got it from me. I strive to keep this site open to all opinions. I ask only that they stick to facts and logic, and that they respond to the arguments of those they disagree with. I could easily ban all attacks on me if I wanted to. But I don't. No serious person studying this blog could claim that criticism of me or my arguments is stifled.

This is a Skewer? Get me Rene Magritte. Fast

But it is misrepresentation, and the obtuse misunderstanding engendered by a dogmatically clouded mind, that I most object to (though I have to say banal statements without any argumentative force such as 'The times are changing' (why not 'Where have all the Flowers Gone?' or 'The Answer is Blowing in the Wind'? Times that can change in one way can change in another. The statement has no value of any kind) or 'what you want will never return' (why not? How do they know?) or 'get with the project' (why should I? I don't like the project and can explain why) do make my heart sink, mainly for the wretched, dank state of mind which they reveal.

And my heart also sank when the former Tory MP Matthew Parris misrepresented what I had said in a radio debate with him. Because the thing I object to most of all in an opponent is misrepresentation. It poisons the wells of debate. So I scolded him sharply at the time and afterwards, and then contacted him to let him know that I planned (as I had told him I would) to post my words and his account of them on this blog, here, where all could see the huge difference between the two. And I intend - because I believe it to be morally imperative - to pursue this to the point of resolution.

So here comes Mr Wright again, saying: ‘Mr Parris skewered you rather neatly in your recent spat and I cannot for the life of me see what he has to apologise for.’

Well, that's such an interesting point of view that I for one yearn to know how on earth Mr 'Wright' arrived at it, as I don't feel at all skewered, much more angered by a respected public figure's casual attitude to accuracy, particularly disturbing in a journalist. What precisely were the words of Mr Parris which 'skewered' me? In what way did they do so? But I bet he cannot do so and, if he is who I think he is, he won't respond anyway, to this or anything else. In the meantime I wish I could commission my favourite surrealist painter, the late Rene Magritte, to paint a blank canvas entitled 'This is a Skewer'. This could represent the non-existent skewer with which Mr Parris didn't actually kebab me. It could hang alongside his (Magritte's, not Matthew Parris's) famous picture of a pipe, entitled 'This is not a Pipe'.

That'll have to do for now. When we have this problem sorted out, and the site back on an even keel, I can get on with discussing the amazing Labour withdrawal from the policy of 42-day and 90-day detention.

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I am grateful for the many messages of encouragement following my posting last week, in which I expressed my frustration at the pitifully low level of some of the comments posted here.

I note that many of these supportive messages came from people who do not necessarily agree with my positions. This is most important to me. I greatly value the contributions here of people who are willing to enter into serious arguments, based upon facts and reason. And inevitably many of these will be from readers who do not share my opinions.

I am distressed only by those who write here to abuse me, or to make unresponsive comments which do not actually engage with what I have said (or which lazily repeat arguments many times exploded here). The task of compiling an index, which would help deal with the second problem, is one I have neglected because I have recently been travelling a great deal, and preparing for several debates and speeches. The need to document and transcribe my recent adventures on Radio 4 also took up a great deal of time. But I hope to use the next few months to set up a good working index which will allow anyone to look up what has been said here over the past few years, on most major subjects.

But this does not solve the abuse problem. I'm told to screen comments. I am against this, as a net which would catch the sort of people I have in mind might well also catch others who did not deserve to be caught. Also, I don't object to being abused myself, and pride myself on allowing the maximum possible freedom of speech. What I object to is that I alone have to shoulder the task of dealing with it.

And this is my point.

Think of this site as a public debate, in which I am both chairman and principal speaker. If hecklers or organised interrupters try to disrupt such a debate, or if certain persons make persistent nuisances of themselves, the mood of such a meeting will generally be hostile to them. The audience has come for serious debate, not for foolishness of this sort. And the chairman can rely on that mood to support his efforts to control them.

So to those who kindly urged me to continue, I have a very serious request. Do not ignore postings which you think break the rules of serious debate. Show that the mood of the site is against this sort of thing. Do not wait for me to seek to rally support against them. I should only need to intervene on such things very rarely. Many of them are quite possibly hoping to get my attention by being unpleasant. If you will condemn them, I won't need to. So they will fail in their objective, and perhaps be chastened as well.

Comment unfavourably upon them, as soon as you see them - not necessarily by disagreeing with their sentiments, and certainly not by being rude in return, but by pointing out that they have descended into abuse, or that they ignore the argument clearly made and the facts clearly stated (these are the main faults of such postings). Let them know that this sort of thing is not acceptable here. A one line comment, as long as it names the contributor involved, is quite enough - if sufficient people do it. It takes a moment. I beg you to do this from now on. Otherwise, all those messages of encouragement aren't really worth very much in practice.

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20 November 2010 9:37 PM

The authorities in this country have given up trying to enforce the law against possession of cannabis.

I know this because I have spent the week researching a statement recently made by the famed Professor David Nutt, hero of the cannabis lobby. And it is deeply misleading, which is especially shocking in one who holds the title ‘Professor’.

Professor Nutt said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that last year ‘160,000 people were given criminal sanctions for possessing cannabis’.

Well, it is true that the Home Office recorded 162,610 cases of cannabis possession in England and Wales in 2009. But what ­happened next? Savage punishment?

Not exactly. The majority of these cases – 86,953 – were dealt with by a feeble procedure known as a ‘Cannabis Warning’. This has no legal status, does not lead to a criminal record and is not even recorded nationally. Yet it is recommended by the Association of Chief Police Officers as the first option, unless ‘aggravating factors’ are present.

Another 19,137 cannabis cases were dealt with through Cautions, which expire after a ­maximum of three months and normally needn’t be declared to employers.

Slightly tougher, but not exactly life-changing, were the 11,492 Penalty Notices for Disorder, which are recorded indefinitely but do not involve a court appearance, a fine or imprisonment.

Only 22,748 cannabis cases, slightly more than one in eight, actually ended in court. Nobody in Whitehall is able to tell me what sort of penalties were imposed or what distinguishes these cases from the others. I suspect that most of these involved persistent offenders, or possession with intent to supply, or were charged in conjunction with other crimes.

There is no record of what happened to the remaining several thousand cases. I imagine they slipped through the many cracks in our crumbling, decrepit criminal justice system.But the message of these figures is perfectly clear.

For good or ill (and I believe it is for ill, since several such people will end up spending their lives in locked mental wards), a young person who smokes cannabis in private is most unlikely to attract the attention of the law. And if he does, he will not be seriously punished. Is a Cannabis Warning a ‘criminal sanction’ in any true sense? Or even a Caution?

Yet because David Nutt is a professor, he can say this sort of thing unchallenged on the BBC, and can also assert that ‘criminalising young people for smoking cannabis is actually more dangerous to them and their life than decriminalising it’.

This is language abuse. A person who knowingly breaks the law of the land is not ‘criminalised’. He criminalises himself. It is also propaganda masquerading as science, and it stinks.

A day for dignity, not jaunty fedoras

I don't know why David Cameron thinks he needs a personal photographer, when most of the British media seem to want to be his personal valets and shoe-cleaners.

It’s amazing what the Camerons get away with.

If Cherie Blair had worn the jaunty fedora hat that Samantha Cameron sported on Remembrance Sunday, the whole world would have been about her ears, denouncing its frivolity and saying, in my view rightly, that it wasn’t fitting for such a solemn occasion.

If Anthony Blair, or Gordon Brown, had used a grubby lavatory swearword in an after-dinner speech in front of dozens of prominent journalists and politicians, as Mr Cameron did on Wednesday night, he would rightly have been excoriated on front pages for lowering the standards of publicbehaviour.

And that’s forgetting all about the Prime Minister’s super-greedy past as a claimer of politicians’ housing benefit, an irony that needs to be remembered at the moment.

Truth about the ‘Darker Later’ myths

In my effort to torpedo plans to place us permanently on Berlin Time, I have this week made the acquaintance of the ‘Lighter Later’ campaign, which is lobbying for this needless and unpleasant change in our way of life.

Actually, they could equally well be called ‘Darker Later’, since that will certainly be the effect on our mornings in winter. Here are a few things about them you might like to know.

They are an offshoot of the fanatical man-made global warming outfit 10:10. That organisation, a favourite of the anti-British, pro-EU Guardian newspaper, were responsible for the disgusting No Pressure propaganda film, in which people who doubted the message of warmist zealots were blown into bloody shreds in a series of supposedly comic scenes.

They sought to organise an invasion of our website last week (I have the evidence), so giving a false impression of public feeling on this matter. They claim that making it darker later in winter will reduce road accidents. Initially, I accepted their claim that this had in fact happened during the 1968-71 experiment in darker mornings.

I sought other explanations for this. But then I checked the actual road-death figures for the period.

Here they are:

1968: 6,810.

1969: 7,365.

1970: 7,499.

1971: 7,699.

1972: 7,763.

Yes, total road deaths in Great Britain went up during this period.

I don’t know why they went up. But they certainly didn’t go down. This one fact is worth a ton of projections and speculations, which is what ‘Darker Later’ come up with when challenged on this issue. I have also asked them to name me one free and democratic country, outside the reach of German diplomatic and economic pressure, that has voluntarily set its clocks to a meridian 600 miles away. There has been no answer.

This was rejected with relief by public and Parliament when we did it 40 years ago. A similar attempt to mess with American clocks in 1974 and 1975 was abandoned because the dark mornings were so unpopular.

My contention that this idea has its roots in the EU has been challenged. To this I reply that one of the many attempts to skew our time eastwards was the ‘Central European Time Bill’ of 1994, keenly supported by the arch-Europhile Roy Jenkins in the House of Lords.

I might also mention that the EU is known to work constantly and covertly for its own ends, as shown in our story about Hughie Green last week, and in the sinister Seventies breakfast lobbies at the Connaught Hotel, exposed ten years ago in an unforgettable BBC Radio 4 programme, A Letter To The Times.

This revealed a co-ordinated attempt to influence public opinion by stealth during the campaign to get us into the EU, and quoted one Brussels lobbyist as saying that such things are still going on. I don’t doubt it.

************************ That supposedly nice and reasonable former Tory MP Matthew Parris has still not apologised for crudely misrepresenting me at a public meeting. In that case, can he still be regarded as either nice or reasonable?

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18 November 2010 2:35 PM

Part of this posting is copied from a comment I left on the original 'Berlin Time' thread. This is because I think it demonstrates the absence of thought among many of the enthusiasts for setting this country's clocks as if it were 600 miles further east than it actually is.

Someone hiding behind the name 'Richard B' asks: ‘Why Berlin time and not Paris or Madrid hmmmm I wonder?’Well, Mr 'B', basically because it *is* Berlin time, and not Madrid or Paris Time. Hmmmmmmm? Did he wonder much?

Get out your atlas and observe that the map is marked with lines of longitude, spreading eastwards and westwards form the zero meridian at Greenwich. They arrive at the opposite of Greenwich in the far east of Siberia, which is 180 degrees east and west (the International Date Line, which does not exactly follow the 180 degree meridian, is to be found here).

The numbering of these lines is arbitrary. But the absolutes which they measure are based upon the rotation of the earth, and are not arbitrary but real. It really is lighter earlier in Berlin than it is here, in the morning.

In theory the zero meridian could go through anywhere. But Greenwich was chosen at the International Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884.

What is not arbitrary is that 15 degrees of longitude represents the distance between two points, where the sun is at its zenith an hour apart. Thus. The sun is at its zenith an hour earlier on the 15 degree east Meridian (close to Berlin) than it is at Greenwich.

And lo, the 15 degree east meridian runs about 60 miles east of Berlin. (Trebnje in Slovenia is exactly upon it, but Berlin is the major city in Europe closest to it, and also the political origin of Central European Time, dating back to the Kaiser but spread, by conquest or pressure, ever since.)

Whereas Paris is only about two degrees east of Greenwich (and ought really to be on GMT), and Madrid is about three degrees *west* of Greenwich, and would certainly be better suited to London than Berlin time - though being further south is not so badly affected by it.

I call it Berlin time because it is Berlin time.

Accusations of 'xenophobia' should only be made, I think, by people who know what they're talking about and have evidence to back their charges. I love Germany, and admire much about it, and often go on holiday there. I just don't see why I should live on German time when I am in England, hundreds of miles to the West.

Germans, likewise, see no virtue in living on Minsk time (the equivalent, for them, of doing what is proposed for us). Why should they? It is out of tune with their lives, as Berlin time would be with ours.

The imposition of someone else's time on a country is a classic Who Whom? question. It is done for the convenience of the one which imposes, and to emphasise the subject state of the one on which it is imposed, hence France's abject continued acceptance of a time zone first imposed on it by conquest, now by calls for 'European Unity'.

Think these symbolic measures are not of importance to the EU? Why then the EU flag on all British embassies, the EU stars on EU-supported projects, the EU blue tag on numberplates, etc?

The EU, a device for imposing German domination over Europe by peaceful means, often advances its agenda under cover, as was evidenced by the Jack de Manio affair and the Hughie Greene story in this week's MoS.

These both provide evidence that the EU cause has promoted itself by backstairs lobbying, without its own involvement being evident. This has happened in the past, and could well be happening now. I might add that one of the principal supporters of Lord Mountgarret's 1994 'Central European Time Bill', which failed in the Lords, was Lord (Roy) Jenkins, the arch-Europhile. In the debate (Hansard, 11th January 1994, House of Lords) both he and Lord Mountgarret denied any EU element in their cause, before anyone accused them of having such a cause. I wonder why it is that there have been so many such Bills, under so many different names, in the past 20 years. The current attempt is the seventh.

I might add that Lord Jenkins was the inventor of the famous 1968-71 experiment, during which we were on Berlin Time all winter (but not in the Summer), and during which road deaths in Great Britain actually rose (GB figures, source National Statistics).

1968: 6,8101969: 7,3651970: 7,4991971: 7,6991972: 7,763

And this in spite of speed limits and breathalysers, which as I said were introduced at the same time (not exactly the same time, but close enough for them to be having a measurable effect).

Since lower road casualties are such a keystone of the 'Darker Later' campaign (as it could equally well be called), this is quite interesting.

There is much else to add on this argument. I only urge those who have not already expressed their disquiet at this unpleasant scheme to write, e-mail or text.

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A number of people have posted here in recent weeks wondering why I put up with the low level of some comments, their utter missing of the point, their personal spite, their claims (from a state of ignorance) that I have never examined topics which I have examined, or that I have said things that I haven't said.

Do I ever, as I contemplate this dismal swamp of incomprehension and malice, think of packing in the whole blog? Well, yes I do, about five times a day. But the response to my BBC posting has brought me pretty close actually to doing so. After years of debating the question of BBC bias, I finally obtain a documented and recorded instance of this indisputably happening. I provide links, transcripts and careful analysis. And what do I get? Thought? Reason? Acknowledgement by those who have hitherto denied BBC bias that I may be on to something? Considered criticism of my point? Articulate defence of the BBC?

Or might there be intelligent comment on my research into what actually happens in this country when a person is caught in possession of Cannabis, under the alleged 'War on Drugs'?

Well, not entirely.

A number of people posted as if I had written this contribution in search of sympathy or to complain about my lot. I said no such thing, and I desire no such thing. I have had redress (as I state) which is what I thought I was owed in natural justice. I am of course interested in the rules which govern who is invited on to the BBC about what and when. I tend to think that, compared with a left-wing equivalent (my friend Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian has an almost exactly parallel career trajectory, and frequently presents Radio 4 programmes, and good for him) or even a female 'right-wing' equivalent (my Associated Newspapers colleague and (sometimes) ally Melanie Phillips is on the regular panel of the 'Moral Maze' and good for her) I get measurably fewer broadcasting chances than I might reasonably expect. I won't here trouble readers with episodes known in detail only to me and certain BBC executives, which in my view offer solid proof of a bias against me that is not personal, but political. But I will state that they happened.

But when I wrote: ‘I don't actually mind having to conduct these fights, because I am used to them’, that is precisely what I meant. Likewise, when I wrote: ‘I don't at all object to Mr Webb's adversarial treatment of me. He should do it to everyone’, that too is exactly what I meant. How is this read (except in a mind blurred and fogged by malice and wilful misunderstanding) as self-pity or a plea for sympathy? It is the *wider significance* of these events that is important, not my individual feelings.

Nor do I agree with some posters that it is futile to analyse this and complain about it where the inequity is measurable and undoubted - as was so in this case. Perfection's not available. But improvements are sometimes possible - and the BBC, under a long bombardment of criticism that it slants to the Left, is slowly beginning to acknowledge that this is true. Eventually, this may have a practical effect, especially if the argument is pursued (as I have sought to do here) with carefully-assembled evidence and reasoned argument. I am told that Mark Thompson, the present DG, is deeply unpopular among BBC establishment people for his recent admission that the Corporation was biased to the left in the 1980s. They realise that this cat can never now be stuffed back in the bag.

Some contributors here don't seem to know (though the information is readily available on the web) that I did some years ago present a programme on the then Talk Radio, during which I sought to demonstrate in practice my theory that adversarial presenters were the best route to impartiality. I should like to do so again, but if readers here believe that all I need to do is to approach the present management of 'TalkSport' with such a suggestion, for it to be granted, they reveal a deep lack of understanding of how such things take place.

The arrangement (in this programme) worked pretty well with Derek Draper because he was *morally and culturally* on the left, the true divide. On good days it was a very effective programme. But it was not a success with other partners, Paul Routledge and Austin Mitchell, because in fact they shared some of my conservative positions on non-party issues. It is all very well saying that my suggestion of adversarial presenters on the BBC is foredoomed. Maybe it is, but it remains a workable and sensible idea, and if the BBC fails to implement it, then it demonstrates the nature of its problem. What alternative do these critics suggest? A British Fox?

To those who wrote as if I was in some way objecting to people being rude about me, and as if the matter was about my hurt pride. a few notes.

Anyone is free to be rude about me on this blog, a freedom many take advantage of. Their contributions are almost invariably posted, where coherent. In fact, the moderators used to come to me to ask about such things, as they are well-brought-up people with good manners who personally felt that such rudeness shouldn't be tolerated. But I insisted that it should be. Lies, as some contributors have found, will not be tolerated. That is a separate issue. But plenty of ad hominem stuff is.

And, as I frequently have cause to say, I have in my life been insulted by experts. When I stood out against the Left among the industrial reporters in the late seventies and early 1980s, I was personally vilified in many unpleasant and lasting ways. When I angered the Left in the 1992 election, and when I did it again over Cherie Blair's attempt to stand for Parliament, various journalists of the Left came after me in uncomplimentary and personalised ways. My books have been reviewed in vituperative and abusive ways (one of these so bad that the author later apologised for it) often by people who have not troubled to read them. And so on.

I don't pretend to enjoy this. But I accept it as a necessary and inevitable part of what I do. As Enoch Powell remarked, a politician complaining about the press is like a sailor complaining about the sea. A columnist complaining that people are rude about him is in the same fix. I doubt if many of those who accuse me of having a 'thin skin' could endure a week of what I have put up with for years. Few who make this sort of accusation have any idea of what they are talking about. What I object to is not the rudeness, but the dim incomprehension.

Should I smile more? There are extant photographs of me smiling. Anyone who has seen them will understand why I try not to do it anywhere near a camera.

Bored beyond measure by accusations of 'humourlessness', I once sat down to measure the laughter I won from audiences on 'Question Time' and 'Any Questions' (see particularly one broadcast from East Dorset in the late summer of 2009). I found it usually outdistanced that given to the other panellists. Sad, I know, but it seemed strange to me that the reputation could coexist with the facts until I understood that some reputations are so powerful that proof of their inaccuracy will simply be ignored.

I am officially humourless. Thus a person who laughs at one of my jokes is quite capable of saying, five minutes later, that I am humourless. This is yet another illustration of the problem that when people's opinions are challenged by reality, they don't change their minds. They shut down their perceptions.

He knew that the answer, in most cases, was that person involved would ignore, deny or suppress the facts.

The purpose of the long analysis, the quotations, the transcripts, the links to broadcasts and to learned research on (for instance) the dangers of cannabis to mental health, was to explore the issue of BBC bias, whose existence is in my view proven absolutely by this episode, in a way never achieved before. It was also to make readers think. In this, alas, I have plainly failed with a number of contributors here. But is the failing in me? Or in them?

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16 November 2010 7:29 AM

As promised, I reproduce below my own transcript of the 'Feedback' programme (now I think taken off the website, as they only last a week) in which I was criticised with no contemporaneous chance of defending myself. I have, as noted before, been given a satisfactory chance to set the record straight. But I should stress this would not have happened had not I and several other people protested pretty forcefully, and had I not insisted rather strongly that early offers of redress were insufficient.

So, while the BBC and the programme deserve some credit for putting the matter right in the end, they certainly don't deserve *all* the credit. And the issue remains of what this episode can fairly be taken to mean.

As I have said before, it needs to be taken together with the original exchange on the 'Today 'programme. This, by the way, was (as far as I can recall) my first appearance on that programme for about two years, perhaps longer. The last appearance I can remember was a discussion with my brother about his book 'God is not Great', during his promotional tour here in 2007.

The subsequent famine of invitations, which seemed to coincide with the Corporation's growing friendliness towards David Cameron, had itself been a noticeable change. For some years I had been invited on to the Today programme perhaps three or four times a year. I remember particularly an occasion where I debated with Lindsey German, of the Socialist Workers' Party, over whether the Left had triumphed or been beaten in modern Britain. I also spoke, more than once I think, about conservative reasons for opposing identity cards.

On this latest occasion, I was at a disadvantage from the start. I had been asked on because of my past criticisms and because of my known opposition to the views of Professor David Nutt. Yet the news bulletins of that day, and indeed the lengthy news reports, had portrayed Professor Nutt's Lancet Report as a serious and powerful scientific document. Before I could even begin to engage on the subject, I had to challenge this assumption, which is why I had spent several hours the previous evening going through the report again and again to see if its weaknesses could easily be explained in crisp terms.

I might add that I'm currently discussing with a publisher a book to be entitled 'The War We Never Fought - Britain's non-existent "war on drugs".''

Readers of the 'Abolition of Liberty' will be familiar with the case I make, and the views I set out, in the chapter entitled 'Evil Drug Dealers', written several years ago. And others will know how persistent I have been in warning that the dangers of cannabis are gravely understated. This warning has been increasingly borne out by growing piles of reputable research into mental illness among the young - certainly to the point where serious doubts must arise. I direct anyone interested in this to the work of Robin Murray, Professor of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in London.

Anyone knowing or caring about this might at least be excused for wishing to get the point across as hard and fast as possible. They might even be excused for having a certain amount of 'passion' as they did so. Frankly, anyone not angered by official complacency and inaction over this grave danger to the young has something wrong with him. As for maintaining that someone is 'criminalised' when he is prosecuted and convicted for breaking an existing law, this is just language abuse. If what the person means is 'this should not be a criminal offence', he should say so. But anyone who knowingly chooses to break the criminal law is not 'criminalised'. He criminalises himself.

But Justin Webb, in his introduction, stated, as if this were a fact, that the report was 'a very serious scientifically-argued attack on current drugs legislation.'

I think this is, at the very least, arguable.

So I still think that this was a clear expression of partiality, which would tinge everything that happened subsequently.

I would hope by now that everyone interested has listened to the original thing.

Many have made comments, some of which I might endorse, and some of which are perhaps a little overstated, about the general conduct of the interview and how it did not favour me. Certainly it followed a sequence which assumed more or less that Professor Nutt was the establishment voice of reason, and I an outsider to be questioned more sceptically. Yet when we started into areas of hard fact, or indeed into discussion of the report itself, I was clearly equipped with facts (my attempt to mention the mental health dangers of cannabis had to be more or less wrestled on to the air over interruptions, as did my point that the criminal justice system is not interested in prosecuting possession of illegal drugs, only in supply).

I don't actually mind having to conduct these fights, because I am used to them. And on this occasion - and this is what I suspect got the goat of my critics, I was able (and this only because of my long experience of BBC interviews and their structure, in which I am never voluntarily given the vital last word) to state clearly that the report wasn't as scientific as it claimed to be, and to slam in the last word - an accusation of irresponsibility against the Professor for seeking to blur the distinction between legal and illegal drugs.

By the way, Professor Nutt in this conversation appears to say that 160,000 people were given criminal sanctions for cannabis possession last year (2009). I have been trying to track down this figure. The division of the Home Office into two parts does not help (nor does the increasing reliance of the government on the British Crime Survey, which is more like an opinion poll than classical crime statistics).

And what follows is a work in progress, to which I would welcome factual contributions and knowledgeable explanations. The Home Office recorded 162,610 cannabis possession offences in England and Wales in 2009. The 'Ministry of Justice' (how I shudder to acknowledge that this country has such a thing, usually a characteristic of a country without any Justice) has so far found (and this list is not definitive or complete) that in the same year police issued 11,491 penalty notices for cannabis possession, and a further 19,137 cautions for the same offence.

Meanwhile 22,748 cannabis offences came before the courts, of which 21,766 resulted in convictions. I am as yet unable to say what sentences were imposed, or what happened to the others. Maybe they were multiple offences committed by the same person. What I also cannot say (but strongly suspect) is that these cases came to court because the defendant involved was a persistent offender, the quantities of drug were exceptional, or he was charged with other offences at the same time, or all of these.

The idea that a young person, with no other criminal record, smoking cannabis in a private place is remotely likely to be imprisoned (or otherwise seriously sanctioned) or 'criminalised' for this offence seems to me to be laughable.

A fascinating insight into the recognised police procedure on this offence is given in this ACPO document.

I am trying to discover what legal status the 'Cannabis Warning' referred to in this document might have, whether it is equivalent to a caution, whether it forms part of a criminal record, or what.

Thus, it seems to me that the Today interview itself put me at a disadvantage, by assuming to be true (or failing to challenge) the assumptions of Professor Nutt, while treating my positions and contentions with a proper scepticism. I don't at all object to Mr Webb's adversarial treatment of me. He should do it to everyone, though I think he (and everyone else whose position is founded on licence money) should steer clear of stating contentious arguments as if they were fact. I just think the adversarial approach should have been applied equally to Professor Nutt.

But it is this inequality of treatment which leads directly to the 'Feedback' episode. Just as prison guards in bad countries can make it look as if their prisoners are struggling, so that they have the pretext to slug them and yank their chains, and thus the prisoners look like incorrigible troublemakers even as they seek to go meekly to their fate, a presenter who is adversarial only in certain directions can make some of his interviewees look like pesky interrupters whereas the others, not subjected to this treatment, all sound calm and serene.

This is bound to happen in an absurd BBC, where presenters are officially bound to pretend that they leave their opinions at the studio door - which is impossible - and where most BBC people share the same socially, morally and culturally liberal background, so aren't even aware that their views *are* views

This is why I have long argued for programmes such as 'Today' to have pairs of adversarial presenters, whose views are known and acknowledged, and who fall on either side of the liberal/conservative divide, so ensuring that everyone gets properly grilled by someone who has no sympathy with him.

So, assuming for a moment that Feedback's principal job is to launch 6-minute show trials (in their absence) of occasional contributors to Radio 4, then it was the handling of the issue on 'Today' which allowed 'Feedback' to do this to me. If Professor Nutt and I had been equally roughed up, then he too would have been constrained to interrupt, to interject and to use the techniques of the underdog.

Of course, what I describe above is absolutely not the job of 'Feedback'. Its targets are supposed to be established BBC presenters and executives, not outsiders who are briefly on air in programmes edited and presented by others. But of course Feedback covered this angle by suggesting that 'Today' had been at fault in having me on, and seeking a contribution from 'Today' - while somehow failing to notice that the whole item consisted of a group of people queuing up to say how dreadful I am, and of course the suggestion that I should be taken off the programme's address book.

But why was this double assumption (Hitchens is self-evidently awful, therefore 'Today' were automatically wrong to have him on, case closed), apparently viewed as axiomatic by 'Feedback' at the time - and never questioned by anyone in the BBC hierarchy? It would be very interesting to know. Does anyone in authority actually listen to such things before they are transmitted (or while they are being transmitted)?

So despite their eventual decision to give me the chance to respond, the next question is: 'How did the idea of subjecting me to such a show trial manage to get past the presenter, the producer and whoever commissions Feedback, and whoever checks recorded programmes before they are aired (not once but twice)? What sort of culture can exist in the BBC, where nobody spotted in time that it was wrong? For there is no doubt that it was wrong, or why was I allowed to respond as I did?

Transcript of ‘Feedback’ item broadcast BBC Radio 4, on 5th and 7th November 2010

About 2 minutes 58 seconds into the programme (the item lasts a few seconds short of six minutes, one fifth of the running time).

Roger Bolton:

'An editor in want of a lively discussion to inject some energy and passion into an otherwise rather dry programme is almost certain to have a list of guests who will always turn up and turn on. However, sometimes there is a danger that of part of the audience being turned off, which is what happened at 8.45 am last Monday on Radio Four.

'The Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens can always be relied upon for moral indignation and rarely hesitates to play the man as well as the ball. Some think he delivers more heat than light - but he certainly wakes up the audience

'His opponent on this occasion was Professor David Nutt, who had been invited on to the Today programme to talk about his latest study comparing the harmful effects of alcohol and hard drugs. The Professor concludes that while other drugs like heroin are more harmful to the individual, alcohol does most damage to society as a whole and that we should review the way we categorise all drugs.

'Mr Hitchens was suspicious of the Professor's motives. Is what follows an enlightening debate which succeeds in clarifying the issues for the listener?'

[There then follows a brief and in my view misleading extract from the Today programme, in which I am both faded down (I was in Oxford) and interrupted by the presenter. Both ‘Feedback’ and the ‘Today’ episode can be heard on Radio 4’s listen again facility]

Then Mr Bolton continued: 'The Today programme's treatment of the issue and Mr Hitchens's contribution were just not good enough, says Guy Johnson.'

"I was livid and he wouldn't even let the guy say anything. He was just trying to shout him down which is kind of schoolyard rubbish"

New voice : "I'm not always in agreement with Dr Nutt, what I would have liked to see was a more cogent and coherent argument as to why the study was flawed"

New voice: "I am a head teacher. I run an 11-18 secondary school in Southampton. The report was essentially hijacked by Mr Hitchens's conclusions. From what I could see, Hitchens did not have any specific specialist knowledge of the topic. He's a foreign affairs and politics specialist if he's anything."

Roger Bolton: 'Thanks to Jacob Schell (unsure of spelling) who has worked with substance misusers for many years, and to Julian Thould (unsure of spelling).

'Dr Adrian Williams also contacted us. He is a research scientist at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire.

'He popped into the Feedback studio on his way back from a conference at Westminster to tell me what he thought of the interview.'

Roger Bolton continues: 'Dr Williams, Peter Hitchens described Dr Nutt's paper as "pseudo-scientific". You've read the report in the Lancet. Was that a fair comment?'

Dr Williams: 'No, I think it was totally unfair. I think Peter Hitchens clearly fails to understand the scientific method. He admitted as much, that he didn't even know what peer reviewing was. And I don't think he actually read it adequately. He obviously didn't understand the basic method of multi-criteria analysis that was described in a lot of detail and I think his criticism was totally unfair.'

Roger Bolton: 'Who would have been the right person to create a more balanced debate? Because there's a lot of division in the country about what we should do about drugs?'

Dr Williams: 'Absolutely. But I think you need someone with a good understanding of drugs and also the method that was applied in this particular study which was this multi-criteria analysis where you try to balance different sorts of impacts such as the individual's health, criminality, other wider damage to society and things like that. Which is not something that everybody understands fully. But it would be important to understand that in order to have an adequate debate on the subject.'

Roger Bolton: 'But somebody like Peter Hitchens does share the views of quite a significant part of the population and he's obviously very vigorous and interesting. People certainly will remember that discussion.'

Dr Williams: 'I think it will be remembered for the wrong reasons. He does seem to rant on and on - and I don't think he gave Professor Nutt an adequate opportunity to explain what had gone in the study. And I think by denigrating the quality of science without justification he was putting forward his own views completely at the expense of a study that was attempting to take an objective, balanced view.'

Roger Bolton: 'Do you think this is typical of some current affairs programmes like Today, that perhaps they're looking for heat rather than light?'

Dr Williams: 'I think there is probably a tendency to get people on who will talk in an animated way about a subject and perhaps give a good radio presence. But they don't necessarily actually inform the listenership in the way that a responsible programme should. What worries me about it is that there are probably a good number of people who have not got a strong background in science who may be sceptical and believe that someone who talks so vocally and vigorously and denigrates it in the way he did and actually believes he has a good scientific reason for putting across that point of view - when I am sure the reality is that he doesn't.'

Roger Bolton: 'So your advice to the editor of the Today programme - if he is listening (though I think he's in China at the moment) - is what?'

Dr Williams: 'I would consider an article like that - to consider the people in the BBC who actually work on science programmes. There are some admirable ones on the R4 network to do with science, Quentin Cooper, Geoff Watts, the medical ones, several I would contact. Those are the people first of all and discuss with them who would be a good person to discuss a paper of this sort.'

A lot of stuff follows here about failed efforts to get an editor from the Today programme to appear (the editor and his deputy were both abroad at the time) ending with the words from Mr Bolton: 'We will not let them forget', as if they were guilty fugitives.

A statement from the Today programme is then read:

'We wanted to tease out with Professor Nutt the political dimension of the drugs debate. Peter Hitchens has long taken an interest in this area and it's not uncommon for the programme to turn to newspaper columnists when casting discussions. We felt both sides got the chance to make their main points and as far as we know neither felt hard done by. The discussion was reasonably robust but we felt there was light as well as heat generated, and the e-mails to the programme seemed to confirm that.'

Transcript ends.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.

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15 November 2010 10:18 AM

Sooner than you think, we could all be living our lives on Berlin Time, an hour ahead of GMT in winter and two hours ahead of GMT in summer.

Such time is fine for that great and historic city, you might say. But Berlin is 580 miles and 15 degrees of longitude east of Greenwich, which means that the sun rises and sets there an hour earlier than it does in England.

The German capital, quite reasonably, does not fix its clocks to the time in Kiev or Minsk. Nor does it seem to suffer greatly by refusing to do so. So why should it be thought sensible for us to live as if we were far further east than we are?

And especially why should the people of the North of England and Scotland do so, when it will mean black darkness till around ten o’clock in the morning in the winter months?

According to Rebecca Harris, a chirpy, enthusiastic young Tory MP, this is a price worth paying for the many sparkling advantages of living our lives in step with Berliners. She believes that later, lighter afternoons in winter – and even later ones in summer – will make the roads safer, make old people less lonely, reduce crime, save energy and boost business.

She has all kinds of studies that appear to prove this, and is supported by a mass of pressure groups that agree with her.

My own impression is that many of these claims are pretty much guesswork. Shifting the clocks about changes less than you might think. The amount of actual daylight remains the same. It is just available at different times of day.

There was an experiment between 1968 and 1971, when we stayed on Summer Time all the year round – and lower road casualties for this period are often cited as an argument for the change. But the same years saw the introduction of roadside breath tests and the 70mph speed limit, so it is hard to claim that lighter evenings and darker mornings are solely responsible – or even to be sure that they are responsible at all.

Evenings are more dangerous than mornings on the roads, especially in these days of cheap alcohol and all-day opening, and of sparse police patrols, because drivers have had more time to drink too much. Light and dark make little difference to that.

But Mrs Harris’s well-supported Bill is well on its way anyway, unlike several similar efforts on the subject over the past dozen years. These all ended in defeat, as did the 1968-71 experiment.

But this one is different. An active and busy lobby seems to have got behind this measure, as any careful student of the media will have spotted. How did all those breezy, uncritical articles come to be written? How did the Prime Minister find the time to imply his own support?

It goes before Parliament on Friday, December 3, and if passed it will trigger the first steps towards this momentous change, possibly separating us for ever from the Greenwich Mean Time which we invented.

We have done this before – but only in the desperate days of wartime, when it was necessary to keep munitions workers at their benches, and farm labourers out in the fields, as long as possible.

But do we really need it now? In fact, might it not be a positive disadvantage to many, and not just those living in the North or Scotland? It is all very well for businessmen who wish to telephone colleagues in Frankfurt, Paris or Rome, though a one-hour difference is really not that hard to manage. But shoving us an hour eastwards would narrow the window in which we can speak to the US, especially to the increasingly crucial West Coast, which would be nine or even ten hours behind us.

In any case, clocks and times are not arbitrary. They measure the objective passage of time, which is governed by the rotation of the Earth. We do not have the power to change this.

Anyone who does much flying knows the unsettling effect even of a small shift in time on the human frame. This is because our clocks are out of synchronisation with our surroundings. What is being proposed is that this should now be our fate for ever. When our clocks say it is noon, or midnight, they will always be lying. For the summer months, they will be lying twice as hard.

Why Berlin time, anyway? This is the question nobody likes to discuss. Why are Sweden, Germany, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Sicily, and everyone else on the Berlin time line, not required to experience the alleged benefits being offered by Rebecca Harris and her friends? It is hard to understand why – if it is so good for us – it is not good for them.

But it is easy to see that since 1893, when Kaiser Wilhelm II’s arrogant and expansionist new German Empire adopted Mitteleuropaische Zeit (Central European Time to you), German power has been forcing its ideas of time on the rest of the Continent. First in 1914, and with redoubled force after 1940, the conquered nations of the Continent were instructed rather sharply to shift their clocks forward to suit the needs of German soldiers and German railways and German business.

A map of the present Central European Time Zone looks disturbingly like a map of a certain best-forgotten empire of 70 years ago. Would it really be silly to suspect that the neatness and standardisation fanatics of Brussels and Frankfurt, who have abolished almost every border in Europe, devised the European arrest warrant and the Euro passport and the European number plate and the European flag – and imposed a single currency on almost every state – would not also like a single time zone?

But wouldn’t it also be fatal to their desire if people in Britain recognised that this was what was going on? Are the smiley, optimistic ‘daylight-saving’ lobby perhaps useful idiots in someone else’s campaign? Rebecca Harris emphatically says that this is not so. But then, if it were, would she know?

Anyone in Britain who wants to live by Berlin time is welcome to do so, just as they are welcome to breakfast on bratwurst. There are good arguments, too, for schools and offices in some parts of the country to open earlier and close earlier in the dark months from November to February.

But that is quite different from our whole country being permanently shifted on to foreign time.

It is not too late to stop Mrs Harris’s curious Bill if enough MPs – more responsive to the public than they once were since their recent embarrassments – can be persuaded by public protest to vote against it.

If we are foolish enough to hurry down this path, it is by no means certain that we shall ever be allowed back if we decide we do not like it. Once we have fallen in, who would be surprised by a quiet Brussels Directive making the change permanent, whatever Parliament does? Now is the time to save our own time.

Register your support by mailing your name and address to BritishTime@mailonsunday.co.uk or by printing off the form here and returning it to British Time Campaign, Mail on Sunday, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS.